Pages

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Spontaneous Human Combustion solved?

I try to take a properly skeptical approach to ofddities, but the riddle of SHC has always seemed to me to need a better explanation that than the brush-off it gets in sources like Skeptical Inquirer. How can a human body burn to ashes with only its own fat for fuel?  A "wick effect" - a human candle - sounds theoretically possible, but hasn't been duplicated in practice. This researcher thinks the answer lies in body chemistry: that the right circumstances can permeate the body with highly flammable acetone. 

See it in New Scientist (registration required)

1 comment:

  1. [quote]but hasn't been duplicated in practice[/quote]

    Thanks goodness!!! Who is trying to do that anyway... Hitler?

    ReplyDelete